Pronounced: MOYL, verb/noun
Notes: Not really a word I know
Yesterday’s word
The word demesne means
- legal possession of land as one’s own
- the land attached to an estate
- realm; domain
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1200s
Background / Comments
I was struck by the pronunciation; “dih-MANE” is pretty close to the pronunciation of domain (doe-MANE), and, in fact, share the same source. Our word comes from the Anglo-French word demeine (which was used in property law). Over time, the spelling changed to demesne (per the rules of French pronunciation, the ‘s’ is silent and the preceding vowel is long.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 